Why wristwatches still matter in a screen-led world

Since the first sundials were carved into stone, we’ve been trying to hold time in our hands. It slips away — it’s simply its nature — but still, we strive to grasp it. A wristwatch is a time-tested incarnation of that impulse. 

Our relationship with time predates the devices we created to measure it. Before escapements and tourbillons, we followed the moon — tribes observed its waxing and waning to chart cycles, migrations, seasons. And then came the conquest of it. We took to the ends of the earth to measure it, define it, make meaning out of it. We built tools, instruments, and complications. We charted the oceans, calculated latitude and longitude, chased accuracy with tourbillons, bound calendars to wrists. Timekeeping didn’t arise out of abstraction, it came from our very mortality — to understand our place within a constantly moving universe. 

Humans instinctively attach meanings to material objects; jewellery, gems, and watches, among other things, become repositories of desire and memory. Unlike phones or digital tools, which are upgraded and discarded every few years, watches possess continuity. They bear witness to changing seasons, weddings and birthdays, graduations, and deaths. During a recent Severance rerun, I noticed that one of the first things revealed about the protagonist, Mark Scout, is his choice of watch: a Vostok Komandirskie Amphibia. A Cold War relic, made for Soviet naval officers. Clunky, mechanical, analogue. As his life is fractured into two timelines, his watch becomes a stand-in for continuity.

A watch’s mechanics are precise and often mathematical, but the meaning they carry is deeply metaphysical. They sit at the junction of science and sentiment, philosophy and personal history. And that duality — of object and idea — is what I find endlessly compelling. That’s partly why a film like Interstellar has stayed with me too. When I rewatched it a couple of months ago, around its 10th anniversary, I couldn’t help but wonder how something so small and ordinary like a wristwatch can carry the emotional weight of the cosmos. The Hamilton Khaki Field ‘Murph’, passed along from Cooper to his daughter, becomes a conduit for both space and time; memory and love.

And yet, for all its precision, time is still a mystery. It’s both absolute and subjective, linear, and cyclical. In physics, it may be measurable, but in human experience, it’s elastic. Horology sits inside that paradox as a practice that deals in measurable mechanics while grappling with the immeasurable. In an era of two-factor authentication for everything and phone-controlled smart homes, we’ve fostered a new kind of intimacy with technology. We are saturated with time but starved of presence. We wake up to alarms that sync with coffee machines, change the colour of our lights with a swipe, and rely on apps to remind us to drink water, and even breathe! As automation takes over, the art of working with our hands has, understandably, waned, which might explain the sudden resurgence of activities like pottery classes or a boom in sports like pickleball. No matter how much we view our lives as an optimisation issue, we’re wired to create and to connect, whether through food, craft, or even math. 

And yet, the phone has become our everything-device: our lifeline to loved ones, our work, and even our sense of social worth (cue that Black Mirror episode). In that world, wearing a wristwatch, especially a mechanical one, feels quietly radical. A small act of rebellion.

This is why in an age of hyper-efficiency, I find myself drawn to something slower. My phone may be a perfect timekeeper — synchronised, satellite-governed, ceaselessly accurate — but it feels sterile. Notifications are abuzz, and we lose hours in a perfectly curated vortex of algorithms. The wristwatch remains stubbornly analogue though. It refuses urgency. It doesn’t vibrate. It doesn’t light up. It asks that you wind it. That you watch it. And therein lies its beauty. Such tactile rituals engage the brain in ways digital interactions cannot. 

The wristwatch serves as a personal sanctuary from the digital noise that pervades our daily existence. It allows us to check the time without being pulled into a barrage of (often pointless) alerts. This simplicity fosters a sense of autonomy over our attention and time, enabling us to be more present and intentional in our actions. It’s worth noting that in the Industrial Revolution, the wristwatch played a huge role in democratising time. The proliferation of affordable timepieces empowered workers to track their own schedules, and challenge exploitative labour practices. This empowerment underscores the watch’s significance not just as a personal accessory, but as a tool for social agency. In today’s context, choosing to wear a mechanical watch can be seen as an act of resistance against the commodification and digitisation of our lives. It signifies a commitment to craftsmanship, heritage, and the human touch in an increasingly automated world. 

Now, I’m not anti-screen. But I do think our hyper-dependence on them has left us more isolated than ever. We work behind them, we unwind with them, we order our meals and the clothes on our back through them. When the power went out recently in parts of Spain, something curious happened. Without phones or television, people took to the streets. They danced. They painted. They talked. They made music by hand. It was, by all accounts, joyful. Analogue. Real. In many ways, it was a reminder that without digital distractions, we revert to creation, connection, and community. That, to me, is the emotion I associate with wearing a wristwatch — it requires you to do something slowly, deliberately, with your hands. The act of wearing and maintaining a mechanical watch fosters a connection to the passage of time. Unlike digital devices that require minimal interaction, a mechanical watch demands presence. It makes time feel less abstract and more real — measurable, yes, but also meaningful. 

There’s a deeper point here about physicality. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, best known for his work on the concept of ‘flow’, often argued that people are happiest when they are wholly absorbed in a physical, creative task. Whether it’s gardening, writing, brewing coffee, or winding a watch, these are the rituals that bring us back into our bodies. They pull us out of the abstract and back into the moment. The more digital our lives become, the more important these analogue anchors are. In many ways, mechanical watches resist the disposability of modern life. They are not designed to be fast or efficient. They are designed to be felt. And that feeling — a turn of the crown, the pressure of a clasp, the rhythm of the balance wheel — is a conscious tether to your own time. It’s a passion for living that values the process over the outcome. There’s beauty in slowing down, in noticing the details, in experiencing the fruits of your own efforts. A reminder that life is fleeting, and time is precious.

Time, before it was measured, was lived. We live in a world of maximal convenience, but sometimes convenience is the enemy of meaning. The slow life is not less productive, but rather, it’s more intentional. We’ve always had a unique relationship with time — it exists without us, sure, but we’ve spent centuries chasing it, defining it, building around it. That’s why wearing a wristwatch feels like the most honest way to connect with my own time on this planet. I for one still wear a decade-old Casio. It was a 16th birthday gift, and it has never left my wrist. It isn’t fancy, it doesn’t sync. But it anchors me. It reminds me that my time is my own to experience. And that, no app or AI can ever replace.

‍